Have to deal with.

I try to remember those so much worse off than me….like Ukraine

energy. I even had to change to dry cat food because I couldn't stand and chop up their canned food... this from the person who every day had prepared homemade food for years. My doctor reviewed my charts one day and noticed my wbc's were going up from year to year. She sent me to an oncologist and, sure enough, a slow leukemia. Then the oncologist noticed my rbc's weren't up to snuff. I had a hormone related anemia. I think the anemia has the worst effect. Reduced oxygen to the brain and body. Reduced iron. We can't get it up to normal, but we're trying to keep it from worsening.

Make sure your doctor is checking your bloodwork over the long haul. Don't forget the thyroid! Most doctors just run a baby thyroid check and use normal markers that permit a thyroid irregularity to slip through the cracks. One doctor ran further thyroid tests and diagnosed Hawasaki, I think it's called....not all that uncommon, so doctors should check for it.

I hope you have a good physical doctor!!!

I began experiencing depressive symptoms at age 12, and they became progressively worse as I got older. When I was in my mid 30s I hit what I refer to today as my "rock bottom". I was experiencing nearly every symptom described in the blog post along with almost daily suicidal ideation. While counseling and antidepressants helped to pull me back from the edge, they were not addressing the root cause.

In 2004, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Mrs Best and I had just started dating several months earlier and we had never slept one night together because I snored like Godzilla. She watched me one night and said that I stopped breathing in my sleep several times. I went to see an ENT specialist, who put me through a sleep study which diagnosed me with severe sleep apnea. I elected to have the UP3 surgery as I still had my tonsils and wanted those gone as those had given me issues since childhood. Following the surgery, my therapy became much more effective and I was able to get off the anti-depressants over time. Since then I have gone on to CPAP therapy for the sleep apnea, but I do not experience anything near the dark lows that I went through in my 20s and 30s.

I am always on guard for what I refer to as "my blue demon" (return of any depressive symptoms).

Luckily I'm doing ok without the cpap.Get a sleep test every year.
Hope it stays this way.

I don't feel ashamed, I just feel like no one cares if I do those things or not... mainly because no one is ever around to tell me. Why bathe or take care of teeth or clean the room... no one cares and no one is going to see it anyway.

Good article.